Jody Bilyeu writes:

Subject: Person in Formal and Academic Writing

The rule for grammatical person in formal and academic writing is a bit complex. The sort-of-new but very sensible rule is that writers should always use first person rather than a third-person substitute ("the author thinks...." "the researcher is curious..."). Such third person substitutes, as the APA manual points out, not only don't make a great deal of sense, but they can cause confusion, as when a reader infers that in addition to you, the writer, someone worked with you, an assistant whom you're calling "the researcher."

On the other hand, academic writing should be about the subject being written about, and not about the author, so the number of times a writer should have to refer directly to him- or herself in an academic paper should be small. To make too many references to yourself in a paper about, say, the after-effects of a tsunami, is not just informal--more to the point, it's a bit self-centered.

But if you're going to have to refer to yourself in an academic paper, the current thinking, as expressed in the most current style manuals, is that you should use the simplest, clearest language available, which is ably supplied by the first person prounouns.